The Day Before Tomorrow
by Idunnowhy
Summary: Carlos confronts some hard truths about his relationship with Keira, as she realizes that she's never going home. Set some time after the end of season three.
1. You think YOU had a bad day

**Author's Note: I know Carlos and Keira aren't a likely pairing in the show any time soon, but with the way he's been falling to pieces this past season I just can't help it :) I think it could totally happen, especially with the way this new timeline is spooling out. I haven't seen the last 3 episodes of season three yet, aside from reading their summaries, so I'm being deliberately vague on the details. This is probably going to be a short fic (I have to finish Hell's Bells SOME TIME before death!) but it's been chewing at the back of my head for a few weeks now. Seemed like a good excuse to take a break from pharmacology to take a stroll down fantasy lane! **

**One more thing. Please, please, please, feel free to stop by and leave me a review, those are the kinds of things that keep me writing! Sadly, Keira and the rest of the cast of Continuum aren't mine. **

_He was nothing. Nobody. Some man from a hospital that came out of nowhere and had Cameron dancing to his tune. _

_Living in her apartment. Eating her food. Watching her television. Sleeping in her…_

_Don't go there, Fonnegra. _

Scrubbing his eyeballs, Carlos forced his attention back to the case file in front of him. Another day, another dead body. A teenager that died of an overdose of what looked an awful lot like Flash-or so Keira said.

Damn it. Slamming the folder shut, he shoved away from his desk and grabbed his jacket. He needed some air. A drink. A dozen. Anything to wipe the memory of his dead partner's face from his mind.

Anything to make him forget about his new partner that seemed to be anything but.

Slamming his hand on the elevator button, Carlos deliberately ignored the worried glances being thrown his way. He'd be the first to admit that the last couple of weeks, he hadn't been himself. Hell, who would be? After weeks of walking around with a woman who wore his partner's face and his partner's clothes and had his partner's memories but wasn't his partner, and yet was, in all the ways that mattered…hell, that would screw with anybody's head.

And hey, he was nobody special, right? He thought wryly, stepping into the elevator and pushing the button down. Just a 21st century cop. Not a time traveler. Not a genius. Not a millionaire or a CEO or any other red carpet persona that his partner seemed to be spending her time with these days. Hell, in Cameron's world, he was more of a nobody than the nobody she was living with these days.

A nobody that, he was forced to admit, was something to Cameron that he'd never be. He was a part of Cameron's future/past life, the life she'd had before she came here. Another timeline, sure, but still a link to the future she was hoping for.

The life she'd give anything, risk anything to go back to.

Slipping his sunglasses on, Carlos started walking. Didn't matter where. Someplace where he might be able to string together more than two thoughts in his head that didn't center around Keira Cameron.

Slumping back against the building, Keira let her shoulders fall. Brave words. Brave promises. Empty threats. Seemed like that's all she was living on these days. She'd sold her soul to the devil when she signed on the dotted line with the freelancers, and the farther down that rabbit hole she fell the more she realized that like Alice, she was a very, very long way from home.

Unlike Alice, it was highly unlikely someone was going to come along, shake her shoulder and wake her up.

Blinking back tears, Keira forced herself to admit what she'd fought against for the last three years. She wasn't going home. It didn't matter what happened now, the life she'd been clinging on to was gone. Sam was gone. There was nothing for her now. Nothing to hang on to.

"There's no one to hang on for," she whispered, the words jerking a sob out of her. Then another. Then another. Before she knew it, she was crouched on her heels, shoulders pressed against the building, head down, crying deep, gut wrenching sobs for her baby, her husband, her _life._ Reaching up to her collar, she moved to press the switch that would make her invisible, give her space to grieve without all those eyes on her, give her time to weep for the people she loved. The people she'd _lost._

Before her fingers could close on the button that would finally bring her peace, a warm hand wrapped around hers.

"Keira? Keira, what's going on?"

He hadn't realized he'd run into her. He supposed he should have-after all, she'd come across sixty five years and another timeline to be here, with him, what on earth would make him think a couple of blocks were going to do it? He'd heard the sound of someone crying in the alley, and he'd told himself that it was his cop's instinct that made him go and check it out.

He was getting really good at lying to himself these days. Even before he'd turned the corner he'd known what he'd find. After three years of working with her, there were times it seemed like they breathed together-or at least it had, before everything had gone straight to hell. He tried to tell himself that it was different now, but when he saw her curled up against the wall, tears he'd rarely seen her shed rolling down her cheeks while she sobbed like her heart would break, trying to curl in on herself and make herself invisible-literally-he didn't think, just reacted.

In that moment it didn't matter which version of herself she was, or who she had been, or what she'd done, or how different she was from the vulnerable woman he'd known. She was his partner, and she was in pain.

"Keira?" Reaching out, he caught her hand before she could flip the switch on that super suit of hers and put more distance between them. "Keira, what's going on?"

Half expecting her to pull back, as she had so many times in the past few weeks, he was surprised when she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his chest, clinging to him while she sobbed out weeks of pent up pain and frustration.


	2. Shifting Seas

The tears ripped out of her for what felt like forever. Couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Keira cried until her throat burned and her stomach hurt and Carlos's coat was covered in tears and other, less graceful bodily fluids. She choked back a laugh when he pulled a small pack of tissues out of his pocket and tried to push away, tried to put some space between them so she could get herself back together. He just pulled her closer, tucking her head under his chin and rocking her like a child while he used his broad shoulders to shield her from the people she could barely hear walking down the sidewalk.

Finally, when she had no more tears to cry, when her eyes were heavy with exhaustion and her breath came out in trembling gasps and hiccups but no more sobs, he let her pull away just far enough to see her face. Taking one of the tissues from the pack she was clutching like a lifeline, he wiped her cheeks dry before wrapping her back up in his arms.

"What happened?" he whispered softly into her hair, and Keira almost started crying all over again. Carlos was so warm and solid under her hands while the rest of her world bucked and twisted beneath her, and in that moment it was too easy to forget that he despised her, push aside the fact that he distrusted her, and let him anchor her to this time and place the way he had so many times before.

She opened her mouth-to say what, she didn't know-but couldn't make the words come out. Somehow Carlos understood anyway, somehow instinctively knew what she needed as he squeezed, then pulled both of them to their feet, tucking her protectively under his shoulder and heading toward the station.

Carlos sighed, doing his best to keep the woman under his arm snugged firmly against his side while they wove through the uncharacteristically light crowd on the sidewalks. She felt so tiny. She was fire and ice, and so fierce it was easy for him to forget that she wasn't much bigger than Betty. She felt…

Well hell. Women's lib be damned, she felt like someone he should be taking care of. Because she was a woman. Because she was his partner. Because despite the darkness in her eyes and her new, cynical outlook on life, despite all the secrets he knew this Keira kept that his Keira didn't, she was still Keira.

That still meant something to him, whether he wanted it to or not.

When they got back to the station he didn't even ask, just led her over to his car and helped her into the passenger seat. She still hadn't said a word. If it was his Keira he'd be worried. Since the day he'd saved her life and she'd told him who she really was, they hadn't had a problem communicating.

This Keira was another story. Sometimes it seemed like she was a million miles away, even when she was standing right in front of him, and he was getting used to her silences even as the part of him that recognized his partner in her banged against them in frustration. It made her strange and unfamiliar and just a little mysterious.

He thought about taking her home. Back to her new apartment and the John Doe she was spending more time with than she was him these days. Just drop her off and drive away and let someone else deal with it so he didn't have to get all tangled up with this Keira the way he had…

'_Doesn't matter now bucko.'_

Slipping his key into the ignition, he took at a look at his partner. She'd curled herself into a small ball and leaned her head against the window. Her hair was falling over her face, shielding her from view, and without thinking about it he reached out to pull the damp strands out of her eyes. She was sound asleep, completely worn out from the storm that had raged through her as she'd leaned on his shoulder, crying like her heart would break.

Watching her sleep, Carlos felt something in his chest that he had kept locked and frozen since he first saw his partner's dead body shift. As soon as it did, he couldn't stand the thought of taking her back to her place, and the man that might be waiting there. Without examining the impulse too closely, Carlos turned the key, shifted into drive, and made the turn that led them toward his place.


	3. Cocoa

_**A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! Someone mentioned it was a little too hard to follow along with Keira and Carlos's shifting viewpoints. Hopefully this makes it a little easier! **_

**Carlos**

'_So long partner. I'm glad you're still here." _

_He'd sounded like a moron, knew it the minute the words were out of his mouth, but what was he supposed to say? It's been fun? Nice working with you? Hey, by the way, I might have loved you, but now you're gone and we'll never know and your double is you but darker and stranger and so like you but not, and I don't know how I feel about that yet? _

_Maybe he could have said it to her, if they'd been alone. He could have told her anything, except the one thing he didn't until it was too late. But he couldn't say it in front of Sadler-no sense giving the little shit ammunition he really didn't need. And there was no saying it in front of Dark Keira, as he was coming to think of her. He was still too tangled up for that. So he kept the words inside, and watched as she drifted off into the ether, leaving him behind. _

**Keira**

Keira moaned, opening her eyes to the familiar-yet-unfamiliar sounds of a man rummaging around outside the door of the room. What time was it? Rolling to her side, she came face to face with a smiley face alarm clock that managed to be both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Tipping her head back, she looked around the room. Carlos's guest room. She'd crashed there, a few times, when the night had gotten late and she hadn't been able to bear the thought of being alone.

There was a time when this wouldn't have felt strange to her at all-but that time wasn't this one, was it? she thought dryly. And that Carlos, the Carlos that had made them margaritas and watched bad movies and fallen asleep on the couch with his arm around her certainly wasn't this stranger with suspicion in his eyes where warm, casual affection used to be.

Maybe showing him _her _dead body had been a mistake, but she couldn't think of anything else to do-and to be honest, she hadn't really tried. She'd done what she always did. She'd run to her partner, her friend, instinctively trusting him to help without taking a moment to consider what seeing _her _would do. The idea that Carlos would be emotionally invested in her death-she wasn't sure what she thought about that yet. All she knew was that she wanted her friend back.

Groaning, she laid her aching head back on the pillow and breathed in the scent of his laundry detergent as the rest of the day came rushing back to her. The anger when she walked away from the Freelancers. The great, soul-sucking maelstrom of grief as she admitted to herself for the first time what she'd known from the day she landed in 2012. She wasn't going home. No one was going to save her. She was never going to see Greg or Sam again.

The pain stabbed deep, and she curled into the pillow, tears streaming down her cheeks and sobs jerking from her chest as she admitted another truth, one that hadn't occurred to her before now in her blind determination to find her way back to the family she'd left behind. Because of her actions in this timeline, she'd lost the small family she had here as well. Alec, her Alec, who she'd given to the freelancers. This Alec, who knew she'd lied to him and hated her for it. Carlos, who held her at arm's length while he held a special place in his heart for the woman she'd replaced.

She'd lost everything, and had nothing to show for it…not even the knowledge that she'd made the future a better place for the people she'd left behind.

**Carlos**

He'd heard her, the moment she woke up. Heard the deep, gaping sobs that echoed from the walls of his non-descript apartment. Pushing himself off the couch and away from the show he hadn't really been watching anyway, he walked over to the kitchen and took two mugs out of the cupboard. Reaching into the pantry, he pulled out the container of cocoa he wasn't crazy about but she had loved. He'd bought a box of it when they were in the middle of some case or another, and had kept buying it as she'd kept coming over. He hadn't even thought about it at the time-just one more thing on his shopping list.

Now he wondered if he'd known, even then, that there was something more than that.

Sighing, he tossed in the milk and put the two mugs in the microwave, weighing his options. Did he go to her? Wait for her to come to him? Call out that there was cocoa in the kitchen and go back to what he was doing like he really didn't care anyway, which was basically the attitude he'd been cultivating since this version of her had showed up?

She took the decision out of his hands when she came puttering into the kitchen, sniffling and swiping at her eyes while carefully not meeting his. That shifting part of his heart melted a little further, and without thinking too much about it he passed her the tissue box on the counter.

"Cocoa's coming. You look like shit."


	4. Feels Like You're Gone

**Keira**

Keira snorted a little, thinking he was probably right. At the moment though, she just didn't have it in her to care. "Gee, thanks," she said dryly, reaching out and plucking the tissues from the box he held out, then coming to stand next to him and breathe in the thick chocolate on the air.

She recognized the smell instantly, and the amount of gratitude welling up inside of her when he pulled the mugs out of the microwave was almost pathetic. It was a favorite of hers, one of the few things from this time that she truly enjoyed-a novelty, really, after a lifetime of MREs and dehydrated, genetically engineered goods. The chocolate was rich and creamy, and left a pleasant coating on the top of her tongue.

Carlos-her Carlos-had always said it tasted like it came out of a third grader's lunch box, but she'd noticed he'd always had some on his shelf when she came over. Its presence here felt like an unexpected gift. How far she'd come, when she could carry so much sentiment for something so small.

"I thought you didn't like that stuff."

**Carlos**

"Yeah, well." Carlos shrugged his shoulders, as uncomfortable with the damp gratitude shining in her eyes as he was with the quick bolt of happiness he felt when she gave a soft sigh of pleasure after grabbing her cup and taking a sip. "It was easier to stick some on the shelf than to try and find a convenience store that carried it in the middle of the night."

She smiled, like he knew she would, remembering the way they'd run down the street in the dark and the rain. She'd laughed like a child, the shadows temporarily gone from her eyes as she went from one shop to another, ignoring his grumbling that they should have brought the car. It was one of the first times he'd seen her face light up like that, careless and carefree, with her hair laying in damp strings around her face, and even knowing it was going to ruin his leather jacket he'd willingly gone along-would have, he realized now, followed her almost anywhere if it would keep her smiling like that.

Looking at the woman next to him, seeming soft and vulnerable in a way he'd never seen this Keira look but he remembered so well from the partner he'd lost, soaking up the heat from the cup she'd wrapped her hands around, Carlos had to bite his lip to keep himself from saying something stupid. He couldn't resist the urge to reach out an arm and wrap it around her waist, pulling her close and tucking her head under his chin. She fit, the way she always had, and he felt muscles he hadn't even realized he'd tensed relax when she leaned against him with a sigh.

"Want to tell me what's going on?" he asked, holding his breath as he waited to see if she was going to pull away, pull back into herself the way she had a hundred times in the past few weeks whenever things got personal. He was absurdly relieved when she shrugged, straightening a bit but not putting any more distance between them.

"It's all gone," she said softly, tipping her head to look up at him. "Sam. Greg. The future. Home. At least the home I knew. Alec. Betty. The friends I thought I had, here." Hesitating, eyes searching his face, she admitted softly, so softly he could barely hear her, "You."


	5. Why am I here when everything is gone?

**Keira**

Keira wanted to bite her tongue off almost as soon as the words left her mouth. It felt stupid, to be complaining about her partner-her friend-being gone when she was standing in his house, wrapped in his arms and drinking his cocoa. Considering everything she'd done, and everything she'd put him through, to have even this much felt like so much more than she deserved.

But she was tired. So tired. Tired of fighting and losing over, and over, and over again. Tired of living every day with the distance between her and the people she cared about. Tired of walking on glass when she was with Carlos, the first friend she'd really had in this time. Tired of pushing her heart and soul to the limit with nothing to show for it.

She was tired, so very, very tired, of being alone. Leaning over, she pressed her head into Carlos's chest, smiling when he reached for her cup and set it down next to his on the counter. Squeezing tightly and wrapping her other arm around his hips when he pulled her tight against his chest and ran a hand up and down her back.

"I'm right here," he said softly, giving her a light shake when she shook her head. "I am. I always have been. You're the one that's different." Keira expected him to stop there-she knew it was her fault. She was surprised when he kept talking. "It's not just that you're a different you, you're a totally different person. Every time someone tries to get close to you, you pull away. It's like you didn't just go back in time to this time, you went all the way back. Slamming doors, keeping secrets. Damn it Keira, I thought we were past that."

She winced at the angry frustration in his voice. "I'm sorry," she said dully. She knew it was inadequate, but it was the best she could do. "I shouldn't have dragged you into my mess. I realize that now. I only wish I would have realized it before it was too late."

"And what, let me think you were-she was-just dead?" Carlos pulled back so he was holding her elbows, his eyes suddenly angry. "Never let me know that you were here? Just hide in the shadows and do your own thing without anyone else getting in the way. Or better yet, maybe you wish you'd never even bothered being my partner in the first place. Is that what you want? Fine." He pushed her away, walking past her back to the living room and flopping on the couch. "You know the way out," he said, not even bothering to turn his head. "Keys are on the counter. I'll hitch a ride to the station in the morning."

**Carlos**

He was being an ass. He knew it, he just couldn't seem to stop himself. After the hell she'd put him through the last few weeks, having her look him in the eye and tell him it was all a mistake was more than he could deal with. If she wanted to go all Lone Ranger, that was fine with him. He'd gotten by without her before, he could do it again.

Keira Cameron could go home, go to her own time, go straight to hell for all he cared.

He heard her step into the living room, felt the other end of the couch give under her weight.

"That's not what I meant," she said softly. He tried to ignore the pain in her voice. "It just…seems like all of this would have been easier for you that way." When he didn't answer her, she reached out and squeezed his arm. "Carlos, I've made a lot of mistakes since coming back to 2012, but being your partner-your friend-was never one of them. You and Alec are the closest things to family that I have here, and now I've messed it all up."

Keira's voice was thick with tears and starting to shake, but she forged on. "I'm never going home, Carlos. My future doesn't even exist anymore, Alec made sure of that. And if I'm not fighting to get home, and I've managed to destroy my relationship with the people that I care about here, then what's the point in me being here at all?"


End file.
